Musings of a Restless Mind

This is an essay that my wife wrote at Christmas time in 2016. I stumbled across it today and want to share it.

There are many ways to think about what we mean when we say “home”. It can be an actual place or it can be more of an attitude and perspective on life. When I was in my last year of college, I listened to a man talk at church one Sunday. He talked about the importance of “roots”….of always putting them down wherever you were, no matter how long or short a time that you were going to be there. He was asking for students to get involved in an ongoing synod. And even though I only had two quarters left, I joined one. I suppose in some way, that was an exposure to being Zen about life. To be present in the moment and place with your whole heart and soul. I remember earlier at Christmas, when it was time for me to leave to go back to college, I said to my mother that I was going home. My mother got a little upset about that and said to me, but this is your home. I thought for a minute and then I said, “Home is where I’m always going.” I’ve carried these thoughts throughout my life…we go on vacations and I make where we are “our home”. I throw myself into wherever we are with a passion…and because of the idea of putting down roots, even if they are tiny ones, I have connections with people in cities that I visit, and always receive a warm welcome form people that could have remained strangers if I had acted otherwise.

If we are truly children of God, then the whole universe is our home. We may have sentimental attachments to a particular place or two, but we miss out on so much of life, if we limit our definition of home. Like the hermit crab that carries its home on its back, we should carry our home in our heart. We are always home then. No matter where we are.

At this time of year…one should remember a young girl and her husband, on their way to be counted for a census, that found home in a manger. Not the place one would think the King of Kings would choose to be born. Then yet again, maybe exactly the place. An ordinary place can be extraordinary if one brings a bright spirit to it.

So, in this season of Christmas, I wish everyone that reads this, the Blessing of Home in their heart.

As a Christian, I say “Merry Christmas” but I smile when my Jewish friends say “Happy Hanukkah”. At the ubiquitous “Holiday Parties” that US corporate cultures throw, Sharon used to reply to “Happy Holiday” by reciting all the solstice-timed holidays she knew, prefacing each with “happy”, and then saying “Happy season of light.”

S. T. Gaffney